Israel Perspectives

Is There Another Way?

By Vivian Silver

Vivian Silver the Co-Executive Director, Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development reflects on the recent and repeated demolition of a Bedouin village that exists without Israeli government recognition or the benefit of lawful protection. › More Info

Four Questions with Aviv Wasserman; Can Arabs and Jews Coexist in Lod?

By Ameinu and Aviv Wasserman

Ameinu recently asked Aviv Wasserman, founder and director of the Lod Foundation, about his work in the city which he hopes will serve as a model for coexistence both in Israel and in the Middle East. › More Info

Update from the Inter-Agency Task Force on Israeli Arab Issues

By Jessica Balaban, Executive Director

Jessica Balaban, Executive Director of The Inter-Agency Task Force on Israeli Arab Issues, discusses some recent and upcoming initiatives and proposed legislation. › More Info

Israeli Youth Today, the Problem of Consensus

By Miriam G. Harel

Miriam Harel explores the Israeli Government's inadequate action towards the youth, especially in regards to educational investment. › More Info

Ten Days on the West Bank: A New Year’s Hope for Peace

By Jack Nusan Porter, Ph.D.

Jack Nusan Porter discusses his experiences from his recent trip to the West Bank. › More Info

A Letter to the American Jewish Community, from Israeli Civil Society Organizations and Individuals:

By An initiative of the Israeli Peace NGO Forum

A long list of committed and influential Israelis working for peace have written a letter to you.
To read the letter and see what they have to say, and more importantly what they need you to do, click here.
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An Experiment That, for a Time, Did Not Fail

By Leonard Fein

In this article first published in the Forward, Leonard Fein, an honoree of the upcoming Ameinu Gala, looks back at 100 years of the uniquely Israeli experiment called Kibbutz. › More Info

Why Communes NOW

By Miriam G. Harel

Is the kibbutz really dead or have the reports of its demise been greatly exaggerated?
Perhaps, as is described in this article, it has simply been redesigned for the 21st century.
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When the Kibbutz Was A Kibbutz

By Amnon Shamosh

Amnon Shamosh of Kibbutz Maayan Baruch reminds us of when we made the dream a reality and when the reality stopped dreaming. › More Info

Four Questions for Rabbi Miri Gold of Congregation Birkat Shalom on Kibbutz Gezer

By An Interview with Rabbi Miri Gold

Rabbi Gold has made her pulpit at Kibbutz Gezer a test case for religious freedom for Jews in Israel. Read the latest developments and her personal comments here. › More Info

Rules of Attainder

By Jeffry V. Mallow, Phd.

It is by now a truism that Israel is the victim of a double standard, accused of being in violation of existing international norms to which other nations are not held accountable.
Double standards have at least the fig leaf of legality since they are based on already existing law. Rules of attainder have not even that.
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Israeli Prime Minister Urged to Back Two-State Solution

By SHELDON KIRSHNER

The Canadian Jewish News interviews Colette Avital's just prior to Prime Minister Netanyahu's meeting with Barack Obama. Read all she had to say here. › More Info

Israel's National Elections - The Results

By

Colette Avital the International Secretary of the Labor Party in Israel, presents an unvarnished look at the Israeli elections and some of the options for both the country and the her Party. › More Info

‘There Is No Alternative’ Is No Answer

By Leonard Fein

In August of 1973 I arrived in Israel as a guest of the Foreign Ministry. For reasons I no longer recall, the Ministry had decided that my conversion to its view of Israel’s policies regarding the Palestinians was a worthy investment. This was six years after Israel’s stunning victory in the Six Day War, hence of its conquest of the West Bank and the Gaza District; it was six weeks before the Yom Kippur War, which Israel won only after suffering significant losses (2656 dead, 7250 wounded).

I remember now only the beginning and the end of a weeklong blur of meetings. This was the first (and last) time I was met on the airport tarmac by a limousine, which is very cool. And, saving the best for last, my visit concluded with an 80 minute meeting with the then chief of military intelligence, General Eli Ze’ira. I was ushered into Ze’ira’s immense office and noticed first the most detailed map of the region I’d ever seen, one that seemed to me nearly on a one-to-one scale.

I was flattered by the time Ze’ira devoted to our meeting, though I recall only what he said at its end: “Look, Fein, you needn’t be so impatient. They [meaning principally Egypt and Syria] are not going to try anything for at least 10 years. And if for some reason they do, then you have my personal guarantee: three days, and we will be in both Cairo and Damascus.”

Six weeks later, the war. Obviously, Ze’ira knew very many things that I did not know, yet he quickly and quite unceremoniously found himself the former chief of military intelligence. So it goes: Lyndon Johnson plainly knew much more than I about what was happening in Vietnam, but that did not mean he was right in his assessment of what America should do there. And Israel’s current Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak, also knows much, much more than I. That doesn’t mean he’s wrong about Gaza; it only means he may be.

Which is – no great surprise – by way of introducing a reflection on the current war.

The standard explanation of Israel’s assault on Gaza is that Israel “has no choice.” That is a slogan with a long history in Israel, going back to the 1930s. If you believe you have no choice when you make war, then you are off the moral hook. But the idea of ein breirah [there is no alternative] is easily transformed into a refuge for the intellectually lazy, a bankrupt alibi for all manner of mischief, a shoddy renunciation of autonomy and responsibility. (Uri Zvi Greenberg, a hugely controversial star of Israel’s far right wing and one of the greatest Hebrew poets of the 20th century, once wrote approvingly that for the Jews, “There is no alternative, for in fact we have no desire whatsoever for an alternative.”) What, we are required to ask, are Israel’s aims in its assault against Gaza? And what are the risks attendant thereto?

It is exceedingly difficult to discern Israel’s war aims. Depending on which Israeli leader is speaking, they range from reducing rocket fire into Israel via a lasting truce, to an end to both rocket fire and the smuggling of weapons and explosives, all the way to Hamas’s definitive ouster from power. All the proposed goals share the urgent conviction that Israel’s deterrent capability, so badly damaged in Lebanon two years ago, be unambiguously re-established.

After more than a week of aerial and naval bombardment and days of ground assault, it appears that Israel has yet to achieve even its minimal goals. Were it to halt its operation today, it could not claim to have achieved the kind of victory that arguably might have warranted its onslaught. But staying longer is not an appealing alternative. Short of actually re-occupying Gaza, it is doubtful that Israel can achieve the kind of change in the rules of the game that could be described as a victory. Unless, prompted by the virtually inevitable carnage, others impose a cease fire that minimally includes reopening the crossing points between Israel and Gaza, tight controls of the Gaza-Egypt border (preventing the smuggling of arms and munitions into Gaza) and a cessation of rocket fire from Gaza into Israel. Then everyone except the dead, the bereaved and the wounded can claim victory, and the terrified can begin to heal.

There’s worse: When this war is over it may take Hamas many months to regroup, but Fatah has already been seriously damaged. Its struggle to be taken seriously by the Palestinian “street” had only lately begun to bear fruit, but now Fatah is again seen as ineffectual, even as a tool of Israeli and American interests. It has been both unable and unwilling to act to protect the citizens of Gaza. One day, it blames Hamas; the next, it excoriates Israel. Still, Israel needs Fatah, needs it badly. Without moderate Fatah – with either Hamas or utter chaos in its stead – there is no one with whom Israel can engage in any serious peace process.

With its right hand, Israel makes war; with its left hand, it builds new housing for Jews in the West Bank. With both hands, then, it weakens Fatah. Israel says it favors a two-state solution, and one must take that seriously, for its leaders know that absent a two-state solution, there will one day come to pass a one-state solution, and that state will not be a democratic Jewish state. A two-state solution is an existential necessity for the Jewish state, its one strategic imperative. Its leaders cannot afford to employ tactics in Gaza that render that strategic imperative still more remote. It follows that even if Israel does win the current battle, it risks losing the fateful war.
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Report from the Beer Sheva Homefront

By Mihal Eliav

Tonight, about half an hour ago, the sirens wailed for the first time in Be'er Sheva. About 40 seconds later, right on schedule, fell 2 bombs. So, we now know that the system works. I knew from the sound of the booms that these falls weren't very close, having had something to compare them to in Sderot.

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BINA Aims to Create Israel's National Spirit

By David J. Steiner

Is a secular yeshiva an oxymoron, or is it a starting point for developing a new Israeli attitude to Israeli/Jewish identity? Read about this institute and its combination of Jewish study and social action work which is a source of hope and pride for individuals, neighborhoods and the entire State of Israel. › More Info

Providing Support for Palestinian Olive Farmers

By Bracha Ben-Avraham

For people to be truly free they must be able to feed themselves, today and into the future. In Israel and Palestine, olive groves provide this security. When olive groves are destroyed today, the past and future are destroyed along with them.
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"No thanks. We'd rather sit in the dark".

By Dan Fleshler

There are enemies of everything Israeli who are like the storied Jewish mamas who prefer to suffer in darkness because suffering is more comfortable, suffering –and anger about the past—is what they are used to. That’s the simile that comes to mind as, gasp, good news rears its unexpected head in the West Bank and in Israel proper. › More Info

Food Banking and Hunger in Israel

By Judith Gelman

Es mine kint - just doesn't cut it any longer -
Hunger in Israel, while no longer ignored, needs more than even the best of good wishes. › More Info

Beta Israel: Orphans of Circumstance

By James Horrox

Israel - The Jewish Homeland.
For Ethiopian Jewish immigrants is this "melting pot" the frying pan or the fire. › More Info

100 Years of Settlement

By Yigal Tzachor

In anticipation of the 60 year celebration of Israel’s independence, we decided to travel around the kibbutzim that encircle Israel. › More Info

A Quartet of Prime Ministers in Israel’s First Quarter Century

By Saadia Gelb

Although still in my 30’s, from the standpoint of Labor Zionist experience, I was an “old man” when I arrived in Palestine in 1947. My observations and evaluations of Israel’s leaders, both political and military, are recorded throughout this book, but of particular interest are the first four prime ministers, all from Labor, who led the country through its tremendous growth and the five wars between 1948 and 1974. › More Info

First kibbutz for Ethiopian immigrants opens in Gedera

By Tamar Rotem, Haaretz Correspondent

One has to see Asanka Derba, an Ethiopian immigrant in his 50s, gently stroking the leaves of the celery and basil plants in his Gedera garden to understand that although he left behind his plot of land in Ethiopia when he moved to Israel, he remains a farmer at heart. › More Info

Cuts in Israel’s Child Allowances, Fertility Rates and Poverty

By Judith Gelman

In 2003, an Israeli family with 10 children received NIS 6,500 (about $1,450) a month in child allowances. Three years later, in 2006, an Israeli family with 10 children received NIS 2,850 (about $640) a month in child allowances. These cuts came about as part of the larger budget cuts Likud Finance Minister Bibi Netanayhu instituted when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon came to power.
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The City's Big Green Secret

By Daniel Orenstein

Who among us has not looked to the hilltops of the Galilee or the plains of the Negev, with their promise of leaving the pollution of the cities and get back to the land? Though such a life may sound ecologically progressive, the opposite is true. › More Info

Odd couple works to aid Israel's Bedouins: Jewish Journal of L.A.-Ameinu in the News

By Tom Tugend

What unites the two is their struggle for the social and economic empowerment of Israel's 170,000 Bedouins, especially the women. › More Info

Two-Thirds of Israelis Oppose Attack on Iran: Poll

By Agence France Presse

Two-thirds of Israelis are now against an Israeli attack on Iran. › More Info

Grasp the Promise of Annapolis

By Daniel Levy

Israel should seize the post-Annapolis moment, while the Arab consensus on the Saudi initiative still holds. › More Info

Israel Hopes to Resume Talks With Syria

By Laurie Copans

Olmert has sent messages to Syrian President Assad to re-start peace talks. › More Info

Harvest of Sorrow

By Avi Glicksman

Israel should recognize the genocide of the Ukranians under Stalin's Russia. › More Info

Peacemaking truths and lies

By Gershon Baskin, PhD

Most Israelis continue to hold onto the lie that Jerusalem is truly united. › More Info

Lessons from Camp David

By Moshe Amirav

I don't accept the Clinton-Barak thesis that the responsibility for the failure was all Arafat’s. › More Info

The communal capitulation

By Goel Pinto

Amit Schlesinger returned to Kibbutz Baram after spending 12 years away, like many kibbutz members who have since returned. › More Info

JNF heads oppose law allowing leasing of land only to Jews

By Shahar Ilan

There is no reason and no wisdom in enacting a JNF law, say JNF-Israel leaders. › More Info

Barghouti, Gaza and Iran

By Benjamin Ben Eliezer

If we spoke to Yasser Arafat, who is considered the greatest murderer of Israel, we have to look at Barghouti attentively, even when he is a prisoner. › More Info

JNF to tell court it will market land to non-Jews

By Anshel Pfeffer

The Jewish National Fund has agreed to sell land in Israel to non-Jews for a
limited time.
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Reporter-at-Large: Time to Talk to Syria?

By Leon Hadar

Assad operates on realpolitik & wants to join the Mideast pro-America camp. › More Info

Judging Israel's Alleged Strike in Syria

By Gershom Gorenberg

I'd like to believe that the planes turning from the Mediterranean across Syria made me safer. › More Info

Does Europe Hate the Jews and Israel? The Other Stockholm Syndrome

By Haim Chertok

Sweden should award itself this year's Ignoble Prize as the most shamelessly anti-Jewish polity in the Western world. › More Info

Olmert's Goal: Permanent Agreement With Palestinians By November

By Shimon Shiffer

Olmert has been meeting with Abbas in order to “agree on principles regarding the core issues" › More Info

Saving the JNF from itself

By Rabbi Eric Yoffie

Preference in immigration is the only legal right to be granted to Jews that is not also to be granted to Israel's non-Jewish citizens. › More Info

Violating the Norms of Democracy

By Former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Arens (Likud)

In a democratic state one cannot condone laws that discriminate between citizens on ethnic grounds. That was certainly not part of Herzl's vision of the Jewish State. › More Info

Time for Zionists to Throw Out the Little Blue JNF Box?

By Dan Fleshler

A new bill sanctions blatant discrimination against 20% of Israel’s citizens. › More Info

Israeli Textbook Tells of Arab Plight

By Richard Boudreaux

Israeli Arabs will have their narrative of the 1948 war taught in Arab state schools in Israel. › More Info

Darfur Refugees, Israel and Us

By Judith Gelman

Israel is considering expelling Sudanese refugees to Egypt--a possible death sentence. › More Info

Israel Razes Bedouin Homes: A Visit to Um El Hiran

By Judith Gelman

I visited the Bedouin village of Um El Hiran after dozens of homes had been destroyed by the Israeli government. › More Info

A Racist Jewish state?

By Ha'aretz Editorial

Ha'aretz: The Knesset bill which discriminates against Israeli Arab citizens is racist. › More Info

The Independent State of West Palestine

By Dan Gordon

The single most hopeful occurrence in the history of the Arab-Israel conflict?

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An Open Letter to Prime Minister Olmert: The Plight of Nahariya One Year After the Lebanon War

By Yigal Tzachor

If the IDF is preparing for war this summer, why are Nahariya's citizens left exposed without proper shelters or the most elementary means of protection? › More Info

Wanted: An Israeli school of realism

By Daniel Levy

Both the left and the right are following policies detached from reality. › More Info

How To Talk Candidly About Israel

By Dan Fleshler

Far left anti-Israel rhetoric actually hurts the Palestinians by making it harder to end the occupation. › More Info

What Next on Palestine: Time to Get Real

By Daniel Levy

The emerging American-Israeli plan is fantastical, divorced from reality and far too similar to the previous failed policies that helped create this disaster. › More Info

A Walk on the Wild Side: Visiting Israel’s West Bank Settlements Eli and Shilo

By Judith Gelman

The World Labor Zionist Movement is leading the fight to stop investment into the settlements. › More Info

How to Win the 1967 War: The Way to the Promised Land

By Gadi Baltiansky

Fear has played a major role in leaders' behavior: the fear of surrendering the slogans and the fear of performing the operation that the patient so desperately needs and wants. › More Info

Six Days and Forty Years

By Yigal Tzachor

The internal struggles in Kosovo, Chechnya, South Africa, and Northern Ireland have ended, while we are still wallowing in the mire of the Territories. › More Info

From Radical Jihad to the Politics of Compromise

By Former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami

Dialogue with Hamas and 'political Islam' is an unavoidable necessity. › More Info

Jerusalem of Red

By Yigal Tzachor

Jerusalem's reality is far from the glamour of songs and prayers. › More Info

Is Jerusalem Really United?

By Dina Kraft

Much remains to be done to truly unite Arab and Jewish parts of the city. › More Info

Forty Years of "Unity"

By Ha'aretz Editorial

There remains a deep and gaping chasm between East and West Jerusalem. › More Info

Labor Gets Its Mojo Back

By Leslie Susser

Labor will decide the future of Olmert's government. › More Info

Israeli Arab and Jewish Parents Come Together

By Diana Bletter

How Israeli society advances depends on changing the fundamental separations between Arabs and Jews. › More Info

Palestine: Occupation, Not Apartheid

By Moises F. Salinas

Equating the Israeli occupation to South African Apartheid is doubly mistaken. It does a disservice both to the Palestinian cause and to the progressive movement.
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Northern Israel Residents Still Struggling from Economic Hardships of the Lebanon War: How Ameinu Partner Yedid is Making a Difference

YEDID has received emergency funding to provide social and legal assistance to traumatized northern residents. › More Info

Why Advocating a One-State Solution Does Not Help the Palestinians

By Dan Fleshler

Uri Avnery explains why pushing for a one-state solution & boycotts of Israel do more harm than good to the victims of Israel's occupation. › More Info

The Plight of Israel’s Foreign Workers

By Yigal Tzachor

It's time that Israel passed laws establishing rights for foreign workers. › More Info

Israel at 59: Suspended Between Euphoria and Despair

By Yigal Tzachor

Investigations now under way into the political leadership may bring dramatic changes to Israel's political map. › More Info

A Vision of What Israel Could Be: Progressive Answers to Anti-Zionism

By Dan Fleshler

When people reject the very idea of a Jewish state, one answer is to describe what that state can be. › More Info

Summer Vacation, But Not As Planned: Personal Reflections on Israel During the Lebanon War

By J.J. Goldberg

Could we fly our own children into a war zone in Israel for summer vacation? › More Info

The Folly of “Re-Branding” Israel

By David J. Steiner

What benefit to Israel does rebranding bring to the children living in poverty, to racism toward Jews from Arab countries, to the poor and declining educational system? Why would we put Jewish money to work to cover up our warts and blemishes instead of putting our money and brain power to solving these serious ethical and social problems?


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Reclaiming the Z Word ...or why I can care about my own people and others at the same time

By Christopher MacDonald-Dennis, Ed.D.

I am a Zionist and a progressive. In fact, I am a Zionist because I am a progressive. I want self-determination for all peoples of the
world, including my own. I simply want a Jewish state, living in peace among and in cooperation with her neighbors. › More Info

CARTER’S ‘PALESTINE’: Badly Flawed with a Large Kernel of Truth

By

Jimmy Carter advocates many of the same constructive policies endorsed by moderate Zionists. But his book is replete with major errors of fact, all systematically biased against Israel. › More Info

Sending Citizens to Marry Abroad: Achieving Civil Democracy and Family Justice in Israel

By IRIT ROSENBLUM, ADVOCATE NEW FAMILY ORGANIZATION

Elena R. immigrated to Israel as a teenager with her family in the early 1990’s and received Israeli citizenship. She met Uri while serving in the defense forces and the two fell in love. After completing university, they decided to marry. But when they attempted to complete the registration procedures at the Rabbinate, the religious authority that maintains › More Info

A Response to Zonszein

By Elihu Davison

Homogamies attract. This fact becomes magnified because we now live in an era of ethnic devolutions. That explains why Scotland and Wales have their own parliaments separate and apart from Westminster. Ethnic devolution is why Northern Ireland suffers from what is so elegantly understated as “the troubles.” It is the essentialist reason for the horrific dissolution of Yugoslavia. It goes a long way towards explaining the genocide now ongoing in Darfur. And it is fundamental to understanding Israel’s encounter with the Palestinians and its other Arab/Muslim neighbors.
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Accounting for our Identity

By

The combination of Education Minister Yuli Tamir's Green Line textbook proposal and the recent document issued by the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee laying out the envisioned status of Palestinian citizens of Israel has gotten Israelis across the spectrum into the familiar cacophony of outrage. Like a spring, whenever issues come up (and there is no shortage of them) that raise tough questions about Israel's performance as a Jewish state, the community lashes back with blind obstinacy, making every effort to quell the matter. › More Info

Encounter Point

By Cary Sperling

We're all being bombarded by TV, radio, emails and newspaper articles about the 'situation' in Israel/Palestine. Although the situation is generally depressing there are a few optimistic points. A most profound and uplifting one is a documentary I recently saw. The documentary, Encounter Point, will be shown at the Quad Cinema in Manhattan from Nov. 17-23rd. This film tells the story of everyday Israelis and Palestinians. It features a former Israeli settler, a Palestinian ex-prisoner, and a bereaved Israeli mother and Palestinian brother, each of whom had a loved one killed in the ongoing violence. However, instead of seeking revenge they risked their lives to bring about peace and a nonviolent end to the conflict.
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Neighbors in the Galilee

By Ruth Kestenbaum Ben-Dov

Last August, I spent an evening with a small group of people sharing our summer experiences. At first glance, not material for an article about some of the most pressing issues for Israeli society – but these were Arab and Jewish residents of the Galilee discussing the Hizballah-Israeli War in Lebanon, its effect on their personal lives, on the country and on their work. All of the participants in that evening's gathering are members › More Info

From Jewish Woman Magazine: Sari Revkin Empowering Citizens for Change

By Ruth Mason

Two quotations on Sari Revkin’s office wall capture her mission in life: “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living,” under a 1902 photograph of Mother Jones, and “He afflicted the comfortable and comforted the afflicted,” in an old framed newspaper obituary about her mentor, community organizer Bob Cheeks. › More Info

Israel's Third World

By Yigal Zachor

Those visiting Kiryat Shmona after the second Lebanon War were likely surprised to see homes left standing. A town bombarded by more than a thousand Katyusha rockets and mortar shells remained standing. › More Info

Report from the Ameinu Children's Solidarity Fund

By Ameinu Staff

In order to accomplish our objective of supporting children endangered
by the attacks by Hezbollah, Ameinu contacted trusted partners to
deliver the services in Israel › More Info

It's Been Thirty Years and I’m Still Looking for a Two State Solution

By David Backman

There is much discussion today about a two state solution for the Israeli – Palestinian conflict. One might think that a majority of people, including leaders of multiple countries, is in favor of such a solution. I have a strong recollection of what it was like for Jewish/Zionist young adults such as myself who advocated such a solution for this conflict thirty years ago in the 1970’s. › More Info

The Hope

By Cary Sperling

Like many others reading this, I am filled with angst and apprehension over events happening in Israel, especially since I lived there for several years. But upon receiving an uplifting email from an Israeli friend and then of the new ceasefire situation, a sudden insight hit me. › More Info

Tug-O-War

By

The sign of a thriving democracy is debate, nuance and a relentless grappling with different ideas, emotions and narratives. An intellectual tug - o - war, if you will. In Israeli academic and activist circles there is normally a cacophony of opinions surrounding the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the media is saturated with varying points of view, often shouted on screen. Up until a month ago, it felt like things were › More Info

THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG

By Jack Chrapot

There is a story from the Holocaust and it goes like this –In the darkest despair of a Nazi concentration camp, an old Jew is constantly praying so a fellow inmate asks him why he occupies his time in this way. The old man replies that he is praying because he wants to thank his god.
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Territories in Exchange for Peace

By Danny Cohen

Danny Cohen calls on the government to learn from the experience in Lebanon and Gaza and to abandon the idea of unilateral withdrawal. › More Info

More Cloudless Myths

By Barry Steinberg

I always recall my first days in this country, where I claim erroneously, that weeks elapsed before any clouds appeared overhead. › More Info

Seen from Israel, this is a different war

By

It is a war no one here wanted, no one planned, and no one thought it
would ever happen again. In May this year we commemorated the sixth
anniversary of our withdrawal from Lebanon, with a wide consensus that
this had been the right decision.
This is the tenth war imposed on a small country, barely 58 years old.
Think at the suffering. Think at all the victims and the bereaved families:
young soldiers, barely 18 years old, and civilians, yes - many civilians
including children, women, the elderly. This time among them: a Christian
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A light at the end of the tunnel

By

The current crisis and its attendant dangers present a
chance to reshape regional realities. The aim of the war
should not be proving the justness of our cause -- that’s
clear to all -- but to improve our national security and
statecraft. We must accept that a terrorist group cannot
be routed and disarmed through military means alone,
and certainly not through a protracted retaking of territory.
War is a crucial stage, but ultimately our goals will
be achieved through diplomacy. › More Info

Hospitality Wears Thin

By Edyth Geiger

It's Shabbat so we are getting starting later.

One of my neighbor's sons with four kids came last night as they just could not stay as guests of others any longer. That's what I anticipated . . . the hospitality wears thin after a while and this is a long-drawn out situation . . . › More Info

Musings from My Fortified Room

By Dana Maliniak, Adv

What is life in Haifa like these days, inside the fortified rooms? What is it like to live from siren to siren, to know that most of your friends and family have moved to the south and you are left alone in a city that has turned into a rocket target and the focus of world media overnight? Attorney Dana Meliniak, › More Info

Last Weekend We Escaped

By Russel Harris

Last weekend we escaped. Couldn't stay in Tel Aviv a moment longer. Day in and day out, every channel on Israeli TV shows how Israel is suffering: Israeli's fleeing their homes; shortages of food, towns, villages & cities hit by +2500 rockets, the economy is reeling, etc, etc. › More Info

There is a war raging outside my front door

By Dan Kohn

There is a war raging outside my front door but life can be very dull.
There is nothing to do but watch television repeating itself hour after hour. Everything is happening around me while I am forced to stay at home. › More Info

There is a war raging outside my front door

By Dan Kohn

There is a war raging outside my front door but life can be very dull.
There is nothing to do but watch television repeating itself hour after hour. Everything is happening around me while I am forced to stay at home. › More Info

The Battle Joined

By Jonathan Baum

The situation here at Sasa is a little nerve-racking but not dire. The battles at Avivim and Maroun el-Ras are close enough for us to hear the small arms and we are, of course, on high alert. So far we've not been struck, although our closest neighbors have - a person who works at our factory was injured in Jish - and we have to keep track of anyone who leaves the kibbutz but, in › More Info

How is Life Affected by War

By Rabbi Mauricio Balter

Yesterday I got a telephone call from the mayor of Kiryat Bialik who asked me if I could make visits to the public shelters to give people spiritual support. And that was my task today in the morning. Together with the director of the Education Department we went over some of these shelters (miklatim tziburim). They are made to give shelter to people who don't have a shelter in their house or › More Info

Report from Eilon

By Barry Steinberg

It is almost a cool dawn breeze rather than sporadic shelling that wakes us. The dog, of course is alarmed, when the shelling finally resumes. He leaps into the air, barking sharply, dispelling any hope of falling back to asleep again. We think the firing, when it does come, is mostly directed into the coastal town of Tyre, tracing the route of more recent rocket attacks in this › More Info

Security Briefing with MK Colette Avital: “Hezbollah has lost respect for Israel”.

I would like to say that I appreciate what Ameinu has done, attending rallies and starting the Ameinu Children’s Emergency Fund. The only idea I may add is that the public in Israel should know about it. Try to contact the Israeli press in New York to have them write about it. The fact that so much is happening in so many cities will boost our morale. › More Info

Are Israel's Military Operations in Lebanon Proportional? Is Israel Guilty of War Crimes?

By Gidon D. Remba

Referring to the Hezbollah-Israel conflict, UN Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour has said that indiscriminate shelling of cities is a war crime; presumably this is meant to apply to Hezbollah's indiscriminate rocket and missile fire on Israeli cities. The Swiss International Red Cross, the "guardian" of the Geneva Conventions, has been explicit in saying that “Hezbollah fighters too are bound by the rules of international humanitarian law, and they › More Info

A Time For War, A Time For Peace

By Danny Shapiro

Israel has not chosen war. The enemy has.

The cannons should be silent when they need to be silent. Not before. And
I don't think that moment has arrived. › More Info

A Different Voice from Sderot

By Nomika Zion

Sderot is a multicultural city, multi-tribal. Journalists must act extra cautiously when they presume to reflect the "Feelings of the Residents". Not all the residents of Sderot seek revenge. Not all the residents of Sderot wish to "Raze Beit Hannon." Not all wish to be rejuvenated by rivers of Palestinian blood. We have enough on this account--too many years, too much blood.

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Between Uncertainty and Real Politic

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While I am writing these words, eight people died in Haifa, Israel's third largest city,
as a result of a rocket launched by Hizbollah. The mood in the air is one of battle, but far from total war. In the Jerusalem vicinity, where I live, the situation is rather calm (for now…) and the crowds fill the pubs in the evenings.
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Report from Be'er Sheva

By Mihal Eliav

Down here we haven't heard any bombs or aircraft. Yet.
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The Proxy War A View from Down Under

By Ron Finkel

We are three days into the latest war in the Middle East -- a war in which Hezbollah and Hamas serve as the violent and lethal proxies for the extermination fanaticism of Iran on the one side and the cynical political opportunism of Syria on the other. › More Info

A letter to a Ken Bob

By Yigal Sela

How strange life in Israel and the Jewish world is! Last Wednesday, following my participation in the meeting of the Board of the Claims Conference for Material claims against Germany, and before catching my flight back to Israel, I had the pleasure to sit with you in a new York Restaurant over dinner. Aside from the pleasure it always is to spend time with you, it › More Info

Gaza 'Situation' Update

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As you are probably aware, this latest escalation follows the on-going, constant shelling of southern Israel, specifically of the city of Sderot, as well as the abduction of an Israeli soldier a week ago, while he was on active duty on Israeli sovereign soil.

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Integrity

By Jeffry V. Mallow, Phd.

I oppose most Israeli settlements in the West Bank. They are unnecessary, they drain resources from Israel proper, they compromise Israel’s security, they are a provocation to the Palestinians, they provide fodder for Arab and Muslim extremists and their European and American fellow travelers. › More Info

Love Not Bombs: An Evening with Etai Pinkas

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Etai Pinkas, the youngest City Councilman in Tel-Aviv, is the second openly gay politician in Israeli history. › More Info

Only Labor will

By Amir Peretz

“Israel is at one of the most important moments in its history, a moment that will define its future. › More Info

The Day After

By Elihu Davison

I'm writing this as the Israel Elections Authority is still counting ballots, so I have no knowledge of actual results. In a telephone call earlier today an Israeli friend informed me that turnout, as expected, appears to be very light. Albeit we spoke in Israel's early afternoon; perhaps there will be a surge to the polls at the end of the workday. That said, however, what might this light turnout presage?
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Ina Friedman Lecture

By Ina Friedman

Ina Friedman, Senior Reporter for the Jerusalem Report and co-author of “Murder in the Name of God: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin”, spoke at our offices recently. Here is an edited transcript of her talk. › More Info

The Second Altalena

By Judd Weinberg

Democracy seems to be the “in” word these days – the answer to all the world’s ills, particularly when applied to the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. › More Info

The McDonald's Intifada

By Avi Glicksman

I wrote this piece after returning from a two week stay in Israel. The primary purpose of my stay was to deliver a talk at the World Congress on Jewish Studies. Along the way I spoke with many Israelis, both native born and olim (immigrants to Israel). The people I spoke with ranged from very religious to very secular and from persons on the left to persons on the right. As this visit occurred on the eve of the pullout from Gaza, people were anxious to speak about this issue and how they see it affecting the future.
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FROM OUR ARCHIVES Israel's Workers Vote AMIR PERETZ to head "NEW" Histadrut

By Jerry Goodman

There was little surprise when Amir Peretz was elected Chairman of the Histadrut, Israel's General Federation of Labor, in this past June's election. Having inherited the leadership mantle when Haim Ramon resigned to return to active political life, he had been the favorite going into the election. This, despite an unexpected challenge by MK Maxim Levy, the brother of MK David Levy, Israel's former Foreign Minister and head of the populist, right of center Gesher party. The uncertainty was how close would be the results. › More Info

Israel in Our Lives

By Brad Rothschild

I recently asked an Israeli friend why he felt it was important for Jews outside of Israel to have a Jewish identity. His response was that no matter how good it is for Jews in any country in the world, there may come a day when they are told that they don?t belong--that they are not welcome in their ?home? countries any longer. His answer is clearly rooted in our collective history as a people, and is indeed one of the primary justifications for Zionism. But this answer is not enough, I told him, for there must be a positive reason that we identify ourselves as Jews, not just because one day our neighbors may beat us to it in a less than pleasant way. The reality is that people, no matter how cosmopolitan, still need to feel a sense of belonging. What we belong to is the Jewish people. › More Info

Peretz and the Labor Party: A Personal Perspective

By Jerry Goodman

Primaries for the Israel Labor Party leadership, originally due to be held on June 28th, have been rescheduled for November 8th. › More Info

RECLAIMING ZIONISM

By Amnon Hadary

My eldest son, Oren, and my father, Gershon, died a mere six years apart and are buried not far from one another on a pastoral knoll overlooking the Mediterranean in the cemetery of Kibbutz Gesher HaZiv. Oren fell in the Yom Kippur War, his first war in defense of Israel?s sovereignty. He had just turned 21, four years younger than the state itself. Gershon died a 79 year old inveterate, peaceful advocate of Zionist sovereignty, a half year before the Six Day War, never having shot a gun in anger. Standing midway between them in a three generational line of contemporary Jewish independence, I have gone out to all my wars to safeguard Jewish sovereignty. › More Info

Disengagement: Reflections at the crossroads

By Avi Melamed

These are dramatic traumatic days we are going through. Yet, it is still important to maintain a broad perspective. Though we, the Jewish People, are at a crossroads in history there are, perhaps, some immediate lessons that we can learn. › More Info

Journey to Gush Katif

By Judith Gelman

Little suggests that only weeks remain for Ganei Tal, a religious moshav in southern Gaza. The lawns are watered and fresh flowers fill the gardens. The major clue that change is coming is the stream of Orthodox tourists making pilgrimages of support. Tourists never visited Ganei Tal before talk of disengagement?even now, visits by secular, pro-disengagement groups are so rare that FOXNews and Ha?aretz accompanied the tour I joined in late June.
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Education - The Next Frontier

By Guy Spigelman

In the background of the battle over disengagement, Israel has been debating a major reform of the country's education system. In 2004 the government set up the National Taskforce for the Advancement of Education, headed by Shlomo Dovrat - one of Israel's leading hitech tycoons.
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Jerusalem Painted Orange

By Ezra Weinberg

What is blue and white and orange all over? Give up? It's a young Israeli child draped with an Israeli flag for a cape with an orange headband. This is the new symbol of Israeli activism - young people showing Zionist patriotic pride in conjunction with solidarity for the people of Gush Katif (this wasn't the kind of activism we did in Habonim!). There is a new definition of activism in Israel and it's pretty fascinating and while it may not jive with Labor Zionist values, it touches the heart and leaves the left wing activist scratching their head. › More Info

Religion and Israeli Democracy: Towards a New Synthesis

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Democracy seems to be the foreign-policy catchword of this generation. For more than a decade, American grand strategy has largely revolved around a desire to spread democratic institutions worldwide. Sometimes this has taken the form of peaceful engagement, such as Anthony Lake?s policy of enlargement under President Clinton. But at other times, and most recently in Iraq, it has been an aim used to justify warmaking. › More Info

Peace Activist Yael Dayan on the Disengagement Plan

By Yael Dayan

I arrived from Israel yesterday, what is central in our thoughts and concern right now is Sharon?s plan to evacuate the Gaza Strip. It is not the final nor decisive step that will bring about peace ? far from it ? but without it we would be standing where we have been for 37 years, in occupation, depriving the Palestinians of their rights, propagating a lack of confidence, suffering from terror, and without dialogue with Palestinians. › More Info

Eco-Zionism ? Are We Abusing the Land?

By Noam Dolgin

?We have come to our homeland in order to be planted in our natural soil from which we have been uprooted. To strike our roots deep into its life giving substances, and to stretch out our branches in the sustaining and creating air and sunlight of our homeland? We, who have been torn away from nature, who have lost the savor of natural living - if we desire life, we must establish a new relationship with nature.? --A.D. Gordon
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A Middle Eastern Valentine

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In 1984, my teacher announced that our grade-six class at Winnipeg's Talmud Torah would be marking February 14 as Friendship Day, a more religiously-palatable holiday than the Christian-inspired St. Valentine's Day that our non-Jewish neighbors were › More Info

We Live in Paradoxes

By Colette Avital

The best way to describe what is happening in Israel is that every day brings its drama though this isn?t new. We live in paradoxes. › More Info

Balancing Balance with Results

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Last month, David Horovitz, editor of the liberal-leaning Jerusalem Report magazine, challenged politically notorious filmmaker Michael Moore to train his lens on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a topic that Horovitz claims Moore has said he does hope to › More Info

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